I’m often asked whether the screenplay for my film Skin, based on the life of Sandra Laing, is adapted from a book. The simple answer is no, but as I’ve often found, the truth—the whole truth—is not only stranger than fiction, but far more complicated.

I first heard Sandra’s extraordinary story—born black to white Afrikaner parents who were unaware of their black ancestry in apartheid South Africa—in July 2000 while sitting in my kitchen listening to Radio Four. The BBC’s blind broadcaster Peter White had gone to South Africa to interview Sandra as part of his series, No Triumph, No Tragedy, exploring the particular forms of prejudice experienced by the disabled.

“No one in their right mind would consider being black a disability,” he reported, “not until, as in South Africa during apartheid, the whole apparatus of the state was employed to exclude and disempower, in the same way that disability is often said to do.”

Sandra’s testimony left me stunned. For days afterwards, I had a lump in my throat whenever I thought about her story. As a director seeking a strong subject for his first feature film, I recognised its socio-political significance and, perhaps more importantly, its emotional power.

But how do you go about adapting someone’s true life story for the big screen? I began digging, and soon discovered two documentaries that had been made about Sandra: the first in 1977 by the acclaimed filmmaker Antony Thomas, The Search for Sandra Laing; and the second, Sandra Laing: A Spiritual Journey, by TV journalist Karien van der Merwe, made in 1998 for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. I also found a wealth of print coverage. Shortly after I heard the BBC radio interview, the Sunday Times published a Relative Values article about Sandra and her mother Sannie; they had just been reunited after a 27-year separation. It gave a rare insight into their relationship and was very inspiring. So which of these—the radio interview, the documentaries, the journalism—would be the principal source material for my screenplay? What rights would I need to acquire?

Stephen Bayly, then head of the National Film and Television School as well as a veteran film director and producer, explained that I needed the “life rights” to Sandra’s story from Sandra herself. Very often, when adapting true stories for the big screen, producers are encouraged to buy the rights to published biographies, because it gives them a purchase on the subject that, in theory, no one else has. The fact is, many famous people’s stories are in the public domain, and unless a biography contains facts that cannot be obtained elsewhere, acquiring an option to a book is no guarantee that no one else can write a script or make a film on the same subject; however, it does give comfort to investors that a pre-existing property is “owned”. In the case of Sandra’s story, there was no book—not yet—so the “life rights” would constitute a security that the information obtained, and our access to the subject, would be exclusive from then on.

So the next challenge was tracking Sandra down. I knew from the radio interview that she lived in a sprawling township east of Johannesburg in a tiny, two-room rented house. One of the things that upset me about her interview was hearing that she was still living in abject poverty while her white family had prospered. I felt compelled to make some form of reparation: to share her story with the world through a feature film, of course, but I also wanted to help her.

Peter White’s producer at the BBC refused to pass on Sandra’s contact details, but two journalists in South Africa who had recently written about her—Karien van der Merwe and Karen Le Roux—gave me Sandra’s neighbour’s telephone number (Sandra herself did not have a phone) in Tsakane Township, East Rand, and wished me luck. My fingers trembling, I rang the number. Her neighbour went to fetch Sandra, and when she reached the phone, I explained what I hoped to do. She asked if there would be any money for her; she was struggling to pay the kids’ school fees and buy them clothes—it was winter, and cold. I told her there would be option fees and a bonus if the film were made. She agreed to meet me.

Three weeks later, I was on a plane to South Africa, a country I had never visited before, my head filled with stories about Johannesburg—the world’s most dangerous city. My trip was brief and the goal simple: to gain Sandra’s trust and obtain the rights to dramatise her story for the big screen. I met her family—her husband, Johannes; her five children, Henry, Elsie, Prince, Anthony and Steve; and her mother, Sannie. I took Sandra to see Sannie in a nursing home outside Pretoria; Sandra hadn’t visited her for several months because she couldn’t afford the transport. Sannie was frail, since she’d suffered three strokes. Before we left, she said she wanted to speak to me privately.

“Who are you?” she asked.
“A friend from London.”
“Are you taking Sandra back to England with you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Look after her, will you?”

I was touched by the request, and promised that I would. When I boarded the plane back to London, armed with the rights to Sandra’s story—and a more realistic sense of Johannesburg as a “normal” big city where of course you have to be vigilant, but not paranoid—I felt certain that nothing could prevent the film from happening now. What I never imagined was how long and tortuous the journey to develop the script would be, how many writers it would take, and how such a complex story, spanning so many years, would end up asking so many questions.

Although my focus at UCLA’s Film and Television Department was on screenwriting, and I had subsequently worked as a professional writer, I felt strongly that the script should be written by a South African. I knew Sandra’s story went to the heart of South Africa’s history and culture, spanning the last 30 years of apartheid, and I wanted the script to be as authentic as possible. The more specific and particular a work is, and the more it deals with aspects of the human condition that we all recognise, the more it becomes universal. I also (naively) thought that a South African writer would produce the goods more quickly, as s/he wouldn’t have to spend years doing the research.

Helena Kriel was one of a small list of South African writers who were recommended to me (there are few experienced screenwriters in South Africa because the country’s industry is still young). Helena was born and brought up in Johannesburg but had made a career for herself in Hollywood. It seemed the perfect match and I was impressed by her writing samples. I raised development finance from private sources and, after many discussions about what the arc of the story would be, commissioned the script.

Around this time, I also conceived the notion of selling the publication rights to Sandra’s story. People constantly asked, “Is there a book?” and I realised there probably should be. I was very lucky to have the biography commissioned by the first publisher I approached: Talk Miramax Books. Miramax Films had just set up an imprint for books that they thought might make interesting films, so it seemed a natural fit.

Sandra’s biographer, Judith Stone—an American journalist based in New York and a contributing editor to Oprah Magazine—was chosen to give an “outsider’s perspective” on the story, which was primarily intended for an international readership. The aims of the book and the film were very different, the former being to tell the full story and to put it in context; the latter, to be highly selective and shape the events to heighten the drama and give the story narrative coherence. Judith Stone proved a wonderful ally and collaborator in the screenwriting process, and rather unusually, the script and book were written in parallel. Judy procured two large tomes documenting Sandra’s life from the South African Office of Home Affairs: the first, a series of newspaper cuttings dating back to 1966, when Sandra was expelled from school for being “coloured” (the official term for mixed race); the second, which includes letters exchanged between various authorities involved in her re-classification from white to coloured, to white, back to coloured…

This was Kafkaesque stuff that would be hard to believe if it weren’t true, and Judy shared it with us, as well as interviews she conducted with people who’d known Sandra since childhood. So Helena Kriel and I were provided with all the materials we needed to create a biopic as factually accurate as possible. This is one reason why the question of whether the script is an adaptation is not so easy to answer; the other has to do with how the script came to be developed further down the line.

Helena Kriel wrote two drafts of the script and I began to send it out for comment. It was clear that, although the bones of the story and structure were in place, there was still a long way to go in terms of characterisation, complexity, and the detail that would give it real resonance. However, the story’s potential was clear enough at this point for the UK Film Council to contribute development finance for further drafts of the script. Helena felt that she had taken the project as far as she could, so we turned to an Afrikaner called Johann Potgieter to continue her work. As I was to discover, any writer coming on board wants to plough his own furrow. Johann created some interesting and authentic new material, but his interest in the story was primarily the father’s journey, not Sandra Laing’s, so we agreed to part company after just one draft.

Convinced now that I needed the best writer I could find, irrespective of his or her nationality, I approached a young American whose sample scripts had impressed me: Jessie Keyt. Jessie had taught at schools in Swaziland and South Africa for a year, so she was reasonably familiar with the country and its culture. More importantly, she seemed to share my vision of the story. She used some of Helena and Johann’s material, created a great deal of her own, and was largely successful in giving the script greater depth, but there was still work to be done.

The story fell into three sections: Act I was Sandra’s childhood; Act II was what I called the “Romeo and Juliet” part, where Sandra falls in love with a black man and her father disowns her; Act III begins when Sandra leaves her lover, who has become abusive, and seeks reconciliation with her mother. It was this latter part which caused all the headaches. The real events of Act III were messy but less dramatic than the preceding sections, yet I knew that that the reunion formed the story’s emotional heart. Somehow, we had to get there. Sadly, visa problems forced Jessie to move away, and other commitments prevented her from continuing to work on the script.

Having run out of writers, it was clearly time for me to take over. We were four years into the process now and I had learned enough about the story, and about South African history and culture. I knew where I wanted the script to go, so it seemed pointless hiring another writer to get inside my head. Still concerned about authenticity and wishing to work on the material in a fresh way, however, I persuaded the UK Film Council to fund a three-week series of script development workshops—using actors to improvise scenes based on a draft of the script I’d prepared before heading off to Johannesburg—so that we could test every scene and create new material along the way. I auditioned over 90 actors and chose 15, most of whom got parts in the final movie. It was a tremendously exciting and creative process. It was also wonderful to see the material coming alive. The workshops were emotional and cathartic, confirming the power of the story and the emerging script. I returned from South Africa with my batteries recharged and wrote a draft that seemed to answer most of the questions people had about the story. Finally, we were getting the kinds of responses to the script we were looking for. It was time to start casting and financing.

A few months later, Oscar-nominee (for Hotel Rwanda) Sophie Okonedo committed to playing Sandra, and not long thereafter, Sigourney Weaver said it was the most important story she’d come across in years and she wanted to play Sannie. But Sigourney Weaver wanted some changes to the script, mainly concerning her character. Having done my bit, I felt I needed extra help to get us there, a fresh pair of eyes. Here’s where Helen Crawley, a rising screenwriter, came in. She had just come off contract from Paramount, having won a coveted fellowship to write two scripts for the studio. I asked her if she’d be willing to do a “quick polish for Sigourney”, taking on board her notes, and to my delight, she agreed.

Like all writers worth their salt, as mentioned previously, Helen did not simply want to implement changes or gloss over the material; she felt there was still deep structural work to do, as well as a fair amount of dialogue-polishing. She attacked the material with fervour, contributing a great deal to the structure and characterisation, going much further than I had anticipated. Helen made great improvements, but equally, her changes gave us new things to sort out, and she was no longer available. Once more, the script was in pieces and needed to be pieced together again, and once more, the task fell to me.

As is clear from the credits, the wonderful South African actress Alice Krige plays Sannie Laing. So what happened to Sigourney Weaver? We did two drafts for her. After the second draft, she said she still felt she couldn’t commit. I asked why she’d taken so much trouble to make the script better, which had certainly been the result, only for another actress to benefit? She’d done too many independent films recently that hadn’t seen the light of day, she replied. And so we parted company.

Happily, Skin did see the light of day. It took nine years from the date I first heard Sandra’s interview to the day of the UK release—but at last, it’s out there.

Whether this convoluted development process constitutes an adaptation is anyone’s guess. It does not, I am sure, in the official sense. But I do feel that, since it didn’t entirely spring from our imaginations, it is an adaptation of sorts, even if it came from countless sources.

Skin has won seven prizes at international film festivals and is being released in the UK through ICA Films from 24 July 2009. More information can be found at www.skinthemovie.net.

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Sandra Laing Skin